FloriMezzo is a new chamber music organization that combines members of the Florida Orchestra with teachers who want to keep up with their instrumental playing, as well as other adult musicians and advanced students.
"Our mission statement is to provide performance opportunities for community musicians, and by doing that we hope to increase the quality of music education and foster relationships within the field of music and revitalize interest in chamber music," said Mark Sforzini, artistic director of FloriMezzo and principal bassoon of the orchestra.
FloriMezzo's debut concert last spring drew a crowd of 250 to the Palladium in St. Petersburg. The group begins its four-concert 2003-04 season this Tuesday with works by Dvorak, Schubert, Mozart, Delibes, Weill, Mahler and others.
"I was stunned because we ended up getting so many people to come to the concert," Jessica Calandra, the executive director, said. "I think the reason is because we had such a mix of people performing. Ever since I've had all kinds of people wanting to play with us."
Tuesday's concert features 34 musicians, including four members of the orchestra. "It's not very often you get to go to a chamber music concert and you hear 34 different people perform during the evening," said Sforzini, who will play in a bassoon quartet that includes two of his students.
A typical FloriMezzo mix has been assembled for Schubert's Octet for strings and winds, with players ranging from orchestra violinist Sarah Shellman to Stephanie Greco, a violinist and student at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School.
Calandra, a clarinetist who teaches band and strings at Perkins Elementary Magnet for the Arts in St. Petersburg, is also playing in the Schubert.
"After you perform with Florida Orchestra musicians, you just become a better player; it raises your standards," she said.
Calandra believes chamber music provides a bridge between the orchestra players and other musicians. "It's a great way for the Florida Orchestra musicians to get to know the teachers and people in the community in a different way, a friendlier, more personal way," she said.
FloriMezzo's concert is at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Palladium, 253 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg. $7-$12. (727) 822-3590.
"Sound Bleed" II
More acoustical complaints, this time from the Nov. 15 concert at Mahaffey Theater of the Mozart Requiem and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms by the Florida Orchestra and Master Chorale, Stefan Sanderling on the podium. It seems that music from an outdoor rock concert nearby could be heard inside the theater. Two weeks ago, a Florida Orchestra chamber music concert in the Heye Great Room at Ruth Eckerd Hall had to compete with Lynyrd Skynyrd in the main auditorium.
There was "sound bleed" between the two venues, as a Ruth Eckerd Hall spokesman put it.
Christopher Johnson of St. Petersburg, who was at the Mahaffey concert, e-mailed me to gripe about another has-been rock band intruding on a fine performance by the orchestra.
"This concert competed (as it were) with the Creedence Clearwater Revisited concert at Vinoy Park (part of Ribfest)," wrote Johnson. "The sound of this concert was quite loud even at the Bayfront Center - and as it happened, a considerable amount of the rock concert bled into the auditorium.
"Or at least, such was the case where I was sitting (in the balcony, near the west side of Mahaffey).
"To be sure, the droning thumpa-thumpa without which modern music is, I suppose, impossible was easily drowned out whenever the orchestra and chorus sang at a level of, say, mezzo-forte or louder. Which was not much of a help for Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, with its lengthy pianissimo passages, or even for Mozart's Requiem, which Sanderling performed with a chamber musiclike transparency."
I heard the choral program the night before at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and it is indeed a shame that the often delicate music was marred in Mahaffey.
Daytime recitals
For daytime concertgoers, pianist Jeanne-Minette Cilliers plays music of Berg, Busoni/Bach, Schumann and Rachmaninoff at noon Tuesday at the University of South Florida's recital hall on the Tampa campus. At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, violinist Lossif Radionov plays works by Paganini, Sibelius, Marin Goleminov and others in the same hall. Both concerts are free.
